Friday, May 31, 2013

Once I've thoroughly excoriated myself
for a misfortune or humiliation, my next reaction, is “Goddammit,
now I have to think about this even more so I can write about it.”
The stress of running a small business has dogged me for over thirty
years. We've scaled down to the extent that our
excellently located building it too large for us. I've had a series
of pending deals that fell apart and have been living with anxiety
with regard to the property for over a year now. The latest deal
looks so much like it's going to stick that my realtor kisses me and
says, “I really think this one is really going to go through,”
and then, laughing, says “unless there used to be a dry cleaner or
gas station on the property.”

The potential buyer does some cursory
research on the property. There was a gas station on the site in
1916. The deal that boded to stick has come unglued. I am faced with
horrendously expensive environmental testing and possible off the
charts remediation before I can market the property. Most likely I
will have to convert it to a rental but this creates another huge
catalog of hassles. A week ago I was fantasizing about writing
checks to pay off credit card debt and the new car that even my
mechanic says I desperately need. Himself and I find a tiny cabin in
the mountains we were going to make an offer on. I've hired a crew
to break down the film library and cleaned out my own office. We've
negotiated a lease on a very nice space in the neighborhood. The
promise of less financial pressure and complication made me so giddy
that I could actually think about Spud's departure without breaking
down.

After being atypically buoyant for a
couple of weeks the gas station news wallops me into despair. Due
to oral surgery I am on my second week of a liquid diet. With my
go-to solace unavailable, I decide, even though it's barely eight, to
take an Ambien(s?) and hit the sack. I'd totally forgotten plans to
go to a concert with my friend Broderick. He arrives and I have
probably never been so happy to see another human being in my life.
I can't think of another person on the planet capable of distracting
me from this epic disappointment. We drink at Mohawk Bend and we
talk about music and film and people we know. We stand in a long
line for a concert at a club on Sunset Blvd. and after an hour
realize there's no way we're going to get in and it completely
doesn't matter. I realize too that I am very drunk.

When my dad saw that 16mm film was on
the way out, he turned the library over to me. He couldn't keep up
with the new technology and didn't want to. With the sale of the
building I decide it's time to do some future thinking. I put an ad
on Craigslist for someone to mastermind a social media campaign and
help us monetize our library beyond the realm of clip licensing. I
receive nearly 200 responses. I am so overwhelmed that Spuds helps
me vet them. We immediately delete inquires containing an excessive
use of exclamation points, resumes that say “team player” or with
links to videos that start with a closeup of a sad girl. I cull the
list down and ask about 20 potentially good candidates to make a
short video with footage from our website. The results are
astonishing. I choose the best of the best and schedule five
interviews. When the real estate deal goes south I don't have the
heart to cancel. The interviewees are young and completely
delightful. I would hire all of them. I am honest that the hiring
has been postponed, perhaps forever. I do offer them footage and a
link to their work on our website. They are gracious but I am
heartbroken with disappointment.

This is short today due to hours on the
phone with the State Water Board, orphan tank specialists and
geologists. An attorney friend has made some referrals and I am
elucidated by a number of patient professionals. I've discovered
Sanborn maps which have existed since the 19th century.
These are intricate hand drawn street maps made for the purpose of
fire insurance. It is a 1916 map that reveals my tragic gas station.
If I weren't in the midst of potential financial Armageddon this
foray into geophysical and environmental sleuthing would be
fascinating.

My sweet boy Rover's eyes have grown
rheumy and I know his hearing and vision are poor. I have to help
him into the car but can't bear how sad he'd be if I left him home.
At age fourteen he is two years beyond the life expectancy of a dog
his size. I take him out to walk as often as I can but when I've
been stuck on the phone trying to figure out the fate of the
building, he's peed on the floor a couple of times and is sheepish
and embarrassed. It is harder and harder to look at him and not see
the inevitable.

Spuds is off to the prom in a white
dinner jacket. He is the first Murphy to attend such an event. He
graduates in two weeks and then his departure is imminent. The status
of my building and my financial future feels precarious. My doggie is
on borrowed time. It is hard to do my usual spin thing here and
conclude on a purely positive note. I did interview five wonderful
young people, kids a bit older than mine. The job applicants and my
own fine kids bolster my faith that the next generation will get it together. Standing on the sidewalk, more than a little tipsy, in a long line
of what I believe are referred to as millennials was totally
pleasant. It evoked my own twenties spent in Echo Park. It occurred
to me that before the kids were born, I used to have fun.
Disintegrating underground gas tanks, kids leaving the fold, decrepit
dogs and all, this is the beginning of my Part Two. I might not be
relieved of financial stress as I had envisioned . The completely
empty nest will be an adjustment. I'll be a basket case when the dog
goes. But there will always be someone to have fun with and help me step out
of my worries for a little while. And thank you God for hard cider.

Friday, May 24, 2013

When
I was in my late twenties Mom loaned me the down payment for a tiny
cottage in Echo Park which at the time, perhaps like Downtown or
Boyle Heights now, was edgy. I do not remember paying my mother back
or whether or not this had been expected of me. The property, a 1924
cottage on a walk street about as long as a short block, was kind of
a hard sell even to, in the argot of the era, “urban pioneers.”
It was the first place I could make my own. The kids call the house
on the walk, the Owl House because it reminds them of the Winnie the
Pooh illustration. I could see my neighbor's living room from my
kitchen window. She was a handsome, sophisticated woman, about ten
years my senior. I was intimidated by her. One night I saw her
alone in her living room and emboldened, called and asked her to join
me for dinner and was surprised when she happily accepted. I found
her more accessible than I'd imagined. We'd both grown up in the
valley but she was from south of Ventura raised by artsy educated
bohos in a beautiful modern house. The stuff I grew up with is now
back in style but in my college rejection of the bourgeois I just
loathed it. I copied my neighbor's color combinations and then she'd
repaint her place using even better colors. She inspired me to amass
Mexican masks and California pottery. The first blank canvas I had
was thrilling.

My
friend Larry and I planned an elaborate scavenger hunt through L.A.
The list of items is in a box in the garage but I remember that the
first clue was placed in a locker at Union Station and at the
finish-line was an elaborate party on the patio of the Owl house. We
spent months planning it. Larry had necromantic predilections but
also an affection for whimsy. He collected skull and Scottie dog
ephemera. He referred to his Fairfax area 30's Spanish apartment,
chock a bloc with cherished items, as the Casa Del Muerte. He wanted
a live Scotty dog to name Mrs. Danvers, a wish eventually fulfilled.
He was an audio engineer and painstakingly made a cassette of all our
favorite songs from lps which he labeled “Shock the Geezers.”

My
favorite picture of my friend Frank, who died of AIDS, is taken on
the porch of the Owl house. He is thoughtful and gorgeous. Later he
became an encyclopedia of physical maladies. I grew impatient with
him and pulled away. I had not realized, nor had he until he was
much more symptomatic, that he was stricken. I did not talk to him
for about two years before he died. I learned of his death much
later and felt ashamed but I cherish the photo that reminds me of the
happy times we had in my first house.

My
elegant neighbor taught me about genteel poverty and well cut clothes
and Mac makeup. She knew Ed Rusha personally and edited an extremely
high tone big budget scholarly magazine. We took two trips to Mexico
together. She had a moody, fragile side. I pulled away a bit when
her mental health began to fray. I failed to support her in a
battle with a neighbor, who was indeed provocative, that sent her
into a tailspin. I wrote a letter to the neighbor suggesting that he
be more considerate of her but I would not take part in a law suit
she instigated and from what I am told lost. She stopped returning
my calls about ten years ago and I hear she is living off the grid in
New Mexico. Larry died, still in his forties, of diabetes
complications. My memories of different phases of my life are tied
into buildings I have lived and worked in. Earlier homes are recalled
in monochrome but the Owl House is vivid color.

When
I became pregnant I was concerned about the walk. Even in the
earliest stages of pregnancy, I was at least a hundred pounds
overweight, and the walk became challenging. My first “grown up”
reading was Jack Smith's daily column in The L.A. Times. His
description of the Mount Washington hillside neighborhood enchanted
me and I decided at about age nine that this is where I wanted to
live. We looked for days at houses with a portly realtor who sported
a gigantic diamond crusted wedding band and referred to his boyfriend
as his “spouse” which was not that common in early nineties. We
had a couple of offers rejected and lost out on a few others. We
agonized about one house that was out of our financial range. It had
a pool. There was urgency. The realtor was patient and comforting.
The cheapest house on his list was in lower Mount Washington. Every
room was painted a different shade of red. There was shag carpeting
and furniture that looked like it came from government surplus. The
owner was a sex therapist. We removed many mirror tiles. My
neighbor from the walk street helped me with the colors. Casamurphy
is now the house I have lived in the longest. I've chosen the colors
for the last couple paint jobs all by myself and am satisfied with
the results.

My
next real estate transaction was when the city bought the huge office
warehouse via eminent domain. My dad fought so long on agreeing to a
price that by the time he finally settled we only had about two
months to find a place and move 10,000 films. Which is a number an
employee threw out twenty years ago so I just always say theatrically
ten THOUSAND films but the truth is I have no idea of how many films
I have. My dad and I looked at a number of commercial buildings and
we couldn't find anything that would work as an office/warehouse. A
sign went up on a building two blocks east. We had sold off and
shipped batches of films back to the distributors, as the
non-theatrical business faded away in the advent of video. The
building was smaller than anything we'd looked at but it was cheap.
It was a divided office with a jeweler on one side and a collection
agency on the other. It is devoid of charm but Dad had very little
use for aesthetics when it came to business. We shed a bunch more
prints. The employees had to cut huge racks down for the much lower
ceilings. We were jammed in but made it work. It was a cash
transaction so there was no big negotiation drama except for the
daunting move itself.

My
mother was no longer competent to live alone at my childhood home.
She was placed in a facility that was as nice as these institutions
can be, although none of them are really never very nice at all. It
seemed nice to her though and after a rocky week or two she adapted
gloriously and nabbed a boyfriend and I was even notified by
management about some hanky panky. Simultaneous to relocating my
mother to the home we had to clean out the house she'd lived in for
over fifty years and the phrase “depression child” should give
you a clue as to the volume of its contents. My friends Dan and
Nancy handled what was an incredibly emotional sale. I met Nancy
because one of my children was struggling with the flute in the
elementary school orchestra. When asked what instrument he wanted to
play and he impulsively said flute only to learn later that 10
year-olds are not often familiar with James Galway or Jean Pierre
Rampal and the flute is considered a girl's instrument. Nancy
nevertheless instructed him patiently for several years until she
finally accepted the futility. Nancy and her husband Dan are
musicians. I have always considered myself first and foremost a
writer but have accepted the need to ply another trade to earn my
keep. Spuds says that it's fine to train for a profession, even if
you have the soul of an artist. If you really love doing something
you will continue to do it. For me, giving up the notion of
supporting myself by writing has freed me up to do the kind of
writing I find most satisfying. I have made the most of running a
business and often have actual fun with it and have made many
wonderful acquaintances. Faced with two kids, a mortgage and the
rapidly changing music industry, Dan and Nancy became licensed
realtors. Nancy continues to teach flute and play with a few small
orchestras. I suspect she gets more pleasure from making music now
that her livelihood is less dependent on it. Like I have made the
best of running a business and pretty much enjoy it, Nancy and Dan
have taken to real estate. My mother's home was one of their first
listings and I am forever indebted to them for shepherding me through
one of the most difficult things I have ever done.

The
business has changed again in the fifteen years we've been in our
smaller office. Digitization means that our work is less labor
intensive which has spawned more competition and caused us to be less
profitable. The building that once seemed so tiny is suddenly too
big. I interviewed a number of cheap-suited commercial realtors.
Dan and Nancy did some research and found me Bruce, sort of a
commercial version of them. He loves the wheeling and dealing but
also takes satisfaction in seeing that his clients better themselves.
Bruce used his imagination and encouraged me to lease out half of
the building rather than sell. We kept the big open room with film
racks and a little storage room became my office. Bruce found a
nice production company to lease the other side for two years. The
tenants left and the economy has improved to the extent that now it's
time to sell. We've had several offers that have fallen apart for
one reason or another. I know we're going to have to move but I
don't know when or where. It's crazy making but when I mentally
remove myself from the equation it is remarkable to see Bruce in
action. I don't know what, if any creative aspirations he started
out with but he writes with a clarity and eloquence that elevates his
avocation to the stratosphere. He was a gymnast in an earlier
lifetime. I think with Bruce as with Dan and Nancy the experience of
intense and exhausting practice has informed their approach to other
endeavors.

Last
week I had some gnarly dental surgery done. If you like gross out
stories I will tell you in person but I'm going to spare the more
delicate readers. This happened while I was texting back and forth
frantically with Bruce the realtor madly trying to salvage a deal the
ultimately fell through. Joe College was my post-surgical caretaker.
Duties included a 2 a.m. emergency room visit. We still have issues,
like in any parent/child relationship but as he drove me back to my
motel in the middle of the night I felt enormously safe with him. He
returns for summer break tonight with a bunch of great kids that I've
come to love over the last two years. Himself's reaction is as you'd
imagine but I love having a house full of kids. In September when I
return from dropping Spuds at Bard I'll return to a new office and
the house will seem incredibly empty. The kids are moving on and
before long will have their own homes to furnish and decorate. I
hope though that their memories of our house are always in vivid
color.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Friday, May 10, 2013

I've heard the part of your life after
the kids leave referred to as “Part 2.” This does glide over the
tongue better than “lonely decrepitude.” Spuds is all wrapped up
in his final childrens' theater performance and I barely see him. He
has a night off from rehearsal. Himself is teaching so for the first
time in a while it's just me and Spuds sprawled out and eating on the
couch. I know that human contact is something you can't bank but I
still try to drink in my time with him in deeply and consciously,
remembering that he's leaving in August and I'll only see him a
couple times a year. We talk about people we know and his
observations are razor sharp yet compassionate. Himself can talk
about ideas until the cows come home but he, unlike me and Spuds,
isn't much interested in people. I confess we do our share of
gossiping but we are both intensely curious about why people are the
way they are. We have such a nice talk.. I realize how much I will
miss this and turn away so he doesn't see me tear up. How sad it is
that when your kids reach the point when they're low maintenance and
interesting that it's time for them to leave.

There are other changes afoot. I will
be moving my office shortly and have no idea where. The mover comes
to make an estimate. I open the door, he sees the film racks and he
gasps, “Oh my God!” My sentiments exactly. Come autumn there
will be no breakfast to prepare with vitamin and Xyrtec neatly
arranged on the napkin and no oatmeal ever. Most likely I won't be
crossing the Hyperion Bridge into Silver Lake. I don't know where
I'll be going in September and it's been over three decades since I
was able to say that.

I guess to heighten my sense of drama
with the pending big shake up I decide to try a trail near the house
that I've always been afraid of. I've turned into a really good
walker and have no trouble with stairs or hills. But, I totally
freak out walking on loose ground or rocks. The path is steep and
narrow and really rocky but I cover some distance, steadying myself
with my hands a couple times. I must have taken a wrong turn because
it ends abruptly. I try to traverse the brush but it is too dense.
The thought of returning the way I've just ascended is terrifying. I
think of calling Himself on my cell phone but it is 6 a.m. and short
of ordering a helicopter, there is nothing much he can do. Finally,
in desperation, I slide myself via derriere down to the street. The
early hour I think is to my advantage because I'm pretty sure there
are no witnesses. I guess the lesson is that I need to be more
selective about which fears I struggle to conquer.

Today is my sister Sheri's 70th
birthday. Joe College has shadowy memories of the the two trips we made to
visit her in Las Vegas. Spuds has no memory of her at all. Sheri's
daughter Cari is staying at my house, in town to visit her own
daughter and granddaughter. I make her breakfast. It pains me that she
grew up with the at sea sensation of having been surrendered for
adoption. I was only 7 when the decision was made but as the last man
standing of the family I still feel culpable. I do have happy
memories of my sister but if I were to characterize her life, I would
say it was a sad one. Sheri sacrificed everything for men who did not
deserve her love or even love her in return. She never got to prepare
her daughter breakfast, or teach her to drive or watch her graduate.
My sister's granddaughter Marlene only vaguely remembers her and her
great granddaughter Penny is born 14 years after her death. It is
Cari's first Mother's Day as a grandmother, Marlene's first as a
mother and Penny's first as a person. Sheri's life seemed to overflow with pain but her good is memorialized in this equation.

I am fearful about Part 2 but oddly
some of the terror was assuaged at a Yo La Tengo concert. I've
blathered on too much about why and how I love the band. The truth
was I was tired and seldom go out during the week these days. But
with YLT it's sort of like the High Holidays. I just can't not go.
I even forgive them the show where they spent half an hour reading a
Spongebob script and the fact that Ira never changes out of that
striped Linus t-shirt. The show starts an hour late. Himself is
grousing. I am not enthralled by the new album but they rework a
couple of the songs to good effect. My favorite song (Stockholm
Syndrome) is omitted but there are soaring moments during the show
that reinforce how music for me is inextricably bound to faith. It is
a revelation and a reminder of how sublime I can be made to feel. .My
boys will be with me for Mother's Day and the anticipation of this is
another reminder of how good it is possible to feel. I don't know
when I'll next spend another Mother's Day with both of them. Part 2
approaches. For the first eighteen years being a parent is pretty
compelling and absorbing business. I can't minimize how much I will
miss the kids but I've gotten complacent, just sitting on the couch
and being with them. I'm not up for any more rocky trails but maybe
I'll walk on the wild side and once in a while drag myself out on a
weeknight to hear a band.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Johns Hopkins sponsors the world's
longest running longitudinal health survey called the Precursor
Report. The study started in 1948 and most graduates of the medical
school from 1948 to 1964 participate. Information is gathered
regarding the incidence of heart disease and diabetes as well as
mental health issues. In recent years, as the participants gray,
research has broadened to include end of life topics. The responses
of the physicians does not surprise me. Most, if terminally ill or
permanently mentally incapacitated would refuse feeding tubes,
ventilators and other life prolonging measures, preferring only
palliative treatment to remain free of pain. This is my own choice
and was the choice of my parents who both died peacefully and
without discomfort. What surprised me however is that the general
public answered end of life questions completely differently, the
majority indicating they'd opt for attempts to prolong life by any
means. Perhaps it is the doctor's more accurate knowledge of how
these invasive measures often play out. Non-medical folks may have
no accurate conception of what use of a ventilator or feeding tube
actually entails. Yet, I find something sweet, if not naive, in the
“never give up hope” persuasion. But I just can't roll with life
for the sake of life itself ethos.

When I learn a new word it invariably
appears then a couple times in what I'm reading. In the same vein,
Himself is reading a piece by our hero Jay Michaelson and asks me who
Tim Minchin is. I am clueless. I listen to podcasts as I stomp
around the hills in the early morning and the first I tune in is a
New Yorker profile of Minchin. He's been around a while but is
better known in his original home, Australia, and current home, the
U.K. He indeed has a following in the U.S. too and is perhaps most
famous for having written the lyrics for the musical Matilda, based
on the Roald Dahl story. Minchin has also acted. He played a rock
star on the series Californication which I find vile but his
character's name was Atticus Fetch which I have to admit is pretty
swell. Minchin is also very popular for his performances which are I
guess what Richard Dawkins would do if he wrote funny songs instead
of books. Minchin sings a song about how much he loves his wife, who
he's been with since age seventeen but as the song continues he adds
that if he hadn't met her he inevitably would have met someone else
to fall in love with. He tackles the hubris of superstition. Do we
actually think we are powerful enough to impact the force of nature
by knocking wood? In one routine he states, “I hope my daughter is
killed in a car crash” just to prove that we humans really lack the
power to tempt fate. I appreciate the clarion call for critical
thinking but I still can't totally surrender my sense of the
ineffable. While I accept intellectually that I just boil down to a
lump of carbon I still throw spilled salt over my shoulder and would
never put shoes on a bed.

I attend the funeral of a friend I was
close to in high school but haven't seen in about 40 years. There
are two old friends I've had contact with but otherwise I don't
recognize a soul. I am disoriented thinking everyone around me is
the parent of a high school chum, unable to drink in that I am among
peers. The service is good but weird as my friend David's family and
friends tenderly express their love for him but also don't stint on
venting their frustrations. David was an artist but not very
commercially successful. His aversion to full time work has
obviously long been a sore point. I think David, a sweet gentle soul,
would have been pleased with his eulogies. He accepted his own
imminent death with equanimity and grace. I sit in the very back
and watch the mortuary personnel do their thing and usher us in and
out as efficiently as possible. Staff members are somber and
sympathetic in their dark suits. Wide brimmed straw hats which
suggest luau, worn when outdoors, directing parking and processions
are a concession to the California sun. Because of course it's
always about me, I think of how I would be eulogized. My smart
friends would figure out a bang up send off but given my druthers I'd
like to hold off for a while and give them even better material. The
mystery, absurdity and business of death.

After twenty five years it all boils
down to the same fight and we are bored with it and have it far less
frequently these days. Sometimes though Himself's pessimism so
harshes my optimism that I just snap. It is always over something
stupid. This time it is particularly stupid. I am Pollyanna and
spin everything into a delicious confection. Himself, is intractably
Catholic, assured of a lousy outcome and apt to downplay his own
accomplishments. After twenty plus years of hard work we find
ourselves in what I consider to be a really nice home. We are
members of the Mount Washington Association and while I sometimes
refer to our exact location as “Baja Mount Washington” I feel
connected with this graceful old neighborhood with its first rate
public school, noted architecture and the lovely historic Mount
Washington Hotel and its stately grounds maintained by the gentle and
non-cultish Self Realization Fellowship. Our home is toward the
bottom of the same hill and I walk to the top of every morning. Himself
refuses to accept that our home is in Mount Washington and instead
doggedly refers to our residence as being in Glassell Park, famous
for being birthplace of the Avenidas, one of L.A.'s oldest street
gangs, now controlled by the Mexican Mafia. He says that Mount
Washington is only the top of the hill. I show him a map that shows
clearly that our home is within the borders of Mount Washington.
“Nah,” he brushes it off, “it's just some real estate
boondoggle.” I note that the map is not published by a realtor but
by the L.A. Times but he still insists we live in Gangland and not
Paradise.

Still, Himself reins me in from airy
fairy calamity and I keep him from opening a vein. The sliver where
our Venn diagram intersects is our curiosity about how and why we
live and die. We are both adherents of critical thinking and
paradoxically in constant awe at our own existence. There will be
the same boring inevitable fight but the tiny place where our two
circles meet is strong cement.